"Well, be careful you don't get stuck in any drifts and freeze fast," said Mrs. Bow Wow, as she began washing the breakfast dishes.
"I'll try not to," promised Uncle Wiggily, and then he put some oil on his auto, and gave it a drink of warm water (for autos get thirsty sometimes), and away the old gentleman rabbit rode through the snowstorm.
"I guess I'll go call on Aunt Lettie, the old lady goat, to-day," he thought as he went through a big snowdrift, scattering the snow on both sides like an electric-car snow plow. "I haven't seen Aunt Lettie in some time, and she may be ill again." For this was some time after Uncle Wiggily had brought her the flowers.
Well, pretty soon he was at the old lady goat's house, and, surely enough she had been ill again. She had eaten some red paper, off the outside of a tomato can, one day right after Christmas, and the paper didn't have the right kind of stickumpaste on it, so Aunt Lettie was taken ill on that account.
"But I'm much better now," she said to Uncle Wiggily, "and I'm real glad you called. Come in and I'll give you a hot cup of old newspaper tea."
"Um, I don't know as I care for that," said the old gentleman rabbit, making his nose twinkle like a star on a frosty night.
"Oh, I'm surprised to hear you say that," spoke Aunt Lettie, sorrowful-like. "Newspaper tea is very good, especially with cream-stickum-mucilage in it. But never mind, I'll give you some carrot tea," and she did, and she and Uncle Wiggily sat and talked about old times, and the fun Nannie and Billie Goat used to have, until it was time for the old gentleman rabbit to go back home.
School was out as he went along in his auto. He could tell that because he met so many of the animal children. And he gave Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow and Johnnie and Billie Bushtail a ride toward home. But before they got there, all of a sudden, as the four animal children were in the auto, and Uncle Wiggily was making it go through a snowdrift, all of a sudden, I say the old gentleman rabbit turned around a corner, and there was Susie Littletail, the little rabbit girl, standing in front of a big heap of snow.
And she was crying very hard, her tears falling down, and making little holes in the snow, and she was poking into the drift with a long stick.
"Why, Susie!" asked Uncle Wiggily, "whatever is the matter?"